Lugo spins a Statcast curveball record

You may not have noticed it in the midst of Curtis Granderson’s two home runs or Jose Reyes’ four hits as the Mets beat the Marlins, 7-4, on Tuesday night, but we saw a Major League record set in Queens, by none other than Seth Lugo. The relatively unheralded Mets rookie allowed just two runs over six innings while helping New York keep pace with St. Louis for the second Wild Card spot in the National League.

As for the record, it happened in the sixth inning, when Lugo dropped a nasty 1-2 curveball to strike out Miami’s Xavier Scruggs swinging. Statcast™ measured that curve at 3,498 rpm, which is the highest-spin curve we’ve ever tracked.

Now, if you want to point out that we’re only in the second season of Statcast™ and that measurements go back only until the beginning of 2015, that’s more than fair. But not only was Lugo’s curveball considerably higher than the Major League curve average of 2,498 rpm, it’s a continuation of the “Lugo has great spin” story — one that put him on our radar from almost the instant he made his Major League debut on July 1.

When Lugo first got the call to New York, it’s more than fair to say he wasn’t exactly high on the must-see list of most prospect followers. He was a 34th-round pick in 2011 out of tiny Centenary College in Louisiana — a school known far more for NBA legend Robert Parish than any particular baseball pedigree, and then Lugo missed all of ’12 after injuring his back and requiring the terrifying-sounding “lumbar spinal fusion surgery.” Even this year, Lugo was carrying a bloated 6.50 ERA in the hitter’s paradise of Las Vegas, allowing 103 hits in 73 1/3 Triple-A innings.

So when Lugo made his debut in the eighth inning of a rain-delayed July 1 game that the Mets would go on to win 10-2, few really took notice. Few, that is, until he struck out Anthony Rizzo on a 3,485 rpm curveball so wicked …

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